Europe's Gypsies Under The Nazis. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, July, 2000 by Peter Hylarides

The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. Guenter Lewy. Oxford University Press. [pound]17.50/US$30.00. 306 pages. ISBN 0-19-512556-8.

Since the end of the Second World War, hundreds of books have been written about the Jewish holocaust. However, a subject neglected for a long time is the fate of the Gypsies under the Nazi-regime. During the Nuremberg trials their ordeal was hardly mentioned and no Gypsies were called upon to testify before the courts. Guenter Lewy, Professor Emeritus of Political Science in the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has made a truly remarkable effort to tell the story of this nearly forgotten chapter in the cruel history of Nazi Germany.

In the author's quest for the truth, he uses documentary materials from twenty-nine German and Austrian archives and focuses on what happened to the Gypsies in Germany, the Ostmark (annexed Austria), the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the Czech Republic) and Alsace-Lorraine. He also describes the ferocious actions taken by German soldiers and SS Einsatzgruppen in the Baltic States, the Soviet Union and Serbia.

According to Professor Lewy, the few books published on this subject contain many misconceptions and factual errors. The main reason for this, he argues, is because they have been researched using limited sources, such as the 1942 Auschwitz decree (final solution of the Gypsy problem) of which no copy has ever been found. He challenges the common perception that Gypsies were treated the same way as Jews. In fact, contrary to the 'Jewish Question', there had never been a coherent set of decrees and decisions which ordered the total annihilation of the Gypsies.

In the top echelons of the Nazi Party racial considerations did play an important role, whereas local, state and police authorities put more emphasis on the alleged asocial conduct and criminal behaviour of the Gypsies, stigmas that already existed before the Nazis came to power. The author proves that reinrassige Zigeuner (pure Gypsies) were treated 'slightly better' than Zigeunermischlinge (Gypsies of mixed ancestry) because, for example, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler had a weak spot for pure Gypsies, due to their supposed 'Aryan' or Indo-Germanic background. All full blooded Jews however, had to be exterminated as they were considered to be the root of all evil in the Reich.

Professor Lewy does not want to minimize or underplay the extreme suffering of the Gypsies, but he objects to exaggeration as this distorts the historical truth and hinders progress in the relationship between Gypsies and non-Gypsies. He reveals not only a wealth of detail about the individual fate of Gypsies, but also reminds us of the brutal methods and criminal minds of the Nazis. His book is a significant, courageous and meticulously documented contribution to the historiography of the Nazi era.